I think that if a player (or should we nowadays say "the bot of a player"?) is skillful enough to succeed in a certain league, they should also be able to earn the rewards promised by this league. Actually, if someone with cards of a lower level reaches the same rating like a player with cards of higher levels that is an indicator that they play the game rather well. I see no reason to punish good players.
Yes, I see a huge problem caused by bots, but in my opinion to 'punish' skillful players is not the solution of that problem.
Furthermore, some cards are simply not much better on higher than on lower levels (think at the chicken), and therefore I see no reason to put artificial pressure on uplevelling every single card.
The thing is that the reality has nothing to do with skill. It's just accounts with level 1 cards playing against other accounts with level 1 cards over and over and slowly but surely moving up the leagues.
Rewards need to be based on a combination of skill and assets. Skill will lead to a higher win rate which is one of the biggest factors in the amount of rewards, but for the assets part all we really had was collection power which is too easily manipulatable.
This aims to fix the asset part of things. If you want to earn the rewards, you have to have the cards. This will be a huge benefit to the entire ecosystem and everyone who owns assets in it.
I disagree, I've always played games where I "fight up hill" I can put money in a game but no where near what others can. I've always made up for this with skill, learning the game and counters. I don't consider myself the best player but above average. I have a lot of max bronze cards, some max silver cards for water and 3 max silver summoners. I fight my way into gold and the frustration of playing against maxed out deck because of the last proposal which said my $1000 deck isn't good enough to earn rewards. I don't rent, overall I feel renting stagnates your account and stops growth.
So I break into gold and can beat players in gold with max out decks who aren't skilled and then get crushed by some that are skilled and some that just have max cards for gold.
I put 7 grand into this game this year after I found it in Feb but I made the decision to get set a baseline passive income so most of that went into 2 nodes. I bought 181 RW packs I'm still trying to open.
I've put money into this game but as I play I'm still contently told the skill I have isn't good enough because you haven't spent enough.
This proposal I understand what it is trying to accomplish and do, I actually somewhat support the idea before the massive shift of SPS rewards to the top end. There has to be a way for yes skilled players to earn without having to drop 5 - 10 thousand dollars ever 6 months. Most of the long term players haven't put that money in (yes there are some if not plenty who have) but overall most of them are where they are because of when they found the game.
Aggy keep saying he wants to fix spawn point in-equality but splinterlands lands keeps making it's own spawn point in-equality overall if you weren't here pre-airdrop or I'd say even alpha / beta the amount of money you have is massive more than what "top" level players have had to put in.
The tournament during splinterfest showed when a bronze player was able to compete in the tournament there is a difference between skill and having enough money to buy the cards.
THIS!
I get so tired of hearing about/reading people being told things like this.
The value of a person's collection can vary immensely. Just because someone's name isn't purple in Discord, doesn't mean they haven't invested a substantial amount of money.
People need to stop assuming that every Silver collection is worth $47 and understand that a good collection can easily be worth 5 figures $$$$$.
!BEER
View or trade
BEER.Hey @cimmeron, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @torran for you. Enjoy it!Do you want to win SOME BEER together with your friends and draw the
BEERKING.Never said you didn't but I had a plan that keep getting nerfed from when I entered the game. When I entered SPS was over .12 so I've lost 1/2 my value there but I've manage to invest right to still be able to get 2 node. I don't have 15 - 30 grand to get a max untamed deck so I'll never be able to complete one for modern. My plan was to set up passive income and work toward CL and Rebellion when it comes out but even 181 RW packs doesn't touch what I need for silver let a lone gold and that is around $750. I have some skill in the game and still learning so I'm "okay" with the struggle fight up hill against maxed out decks in each league which they are there and most of what I fight anymore since the last proposal. While I try to build because I wasn't here in the beginning. Prior to the last proposal this one was needed now... most of the decks I fight in silver and gold are maxed for silver at least and a lot for gold.
Yes, in lower leagues that might be correct.
In higher leagues I can talk for myself: as I am using a pure gold foil account I cannot max all cards because that is simply too expensive (maybe for non GF accounts that's somewhat easier). However, I can use some near max level cards quite effective (also some cards like the chicken or the albatross don't even require high levels at all to be very helpful) and normally always reach Champion II. In that case (at least if played manually) I call that skills.
I wouldn't consider that change to be "terrible" but I am not convinced it to have an overall positive effect (I might think about it again, though).
Yes you're right that it's different in higher leagues vs lower leagues. In higher leagues it's much more skill-based and this particular issue is mostly found in the lower leagues.
Overall though, the general concept here is to require more assets to earn the max potential rewards. So the fact that some cards like the chicken don't require high levels is a bad thing in my opinion - there should always be benefits for leveling up cards, so this mechanism helps to provide that. Now there will be more reason to level up those cards.
For gold foil cards, I think typically the GF card bonus will outweigh the reduction from this change, so they will still be a net positive in most cases, and also hopefully this will provide more incentive for them to be purchased/rented even at the high prices.
Nice to see that you take the time to answer to questions and concerns so thoroughly!
As you are 'here' I take the opportunity to let you know what is my only real worry concerning the future of Splinterlands (I think all other problems should be anyhow solvable). I fear that bots will completely dominate the game sooner or later (and to a certain degree already do, even in the highest leagues - you might ask @jacekw for confirmation).
I wrote about that topic here, but since then the problem even increased.
I understand that the philosophy of blockchain and decentralization makes it difficult to take any effective measures against bot dominance.
I also know the view point of the Splinterlands team to be 'bot agnostic'.
Nevertheless, I would really apreciate you to read my bot post in case your time allows it.
(Of course then you could also answer in Discord instead of on chain if you prefer that.)
I read your post and I agree with you about bots. If they can beat chess and go they can beat Splinterlands (which is currently much simpler than chess or go). I have two comments on that:
The plan is to make the game more and more involved with more player input over time. I know it's still a while out, but the item and spell cards that are part of the land expansion are a good example of that. That type of thing will increase the complexity for bots by many orders of magnitude and hopefully give human players a big advantage, at least for a while, by which time hopefully we can add even more things to the game. The advantage we have over chess or go is that chess and go don't change and add new features, but Splinterlands does (it's just been very slow, but will be getting faster).
I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad thing if bots are ultimately better than human players. Many people will still just enjoy playing the game and they will be matched up against opponents at a similar skill level - especially as the game grows and there are more players at all levels. So at the highest levels people may use bots and compete on the best bot software (which is also kind of cool), and then at other levels human players can compete against other players (whether bot or human) at their skill level so they can enjoy the game and work on improving. So I'm not sure that it's necessarily bad or good - it's just different and has its own pros and cons.
Nice reply!
The first part sounds promising.
Concerning the second part:
Yes, actually, I am also fascinated by some chess programs, 'masterpieces' of software and (partly) AI.
And I also respect people who will write better and better Splinterlands bots in future (yes, that's indeed also "cool"). :)
A pure bot championship would be actually fascinating, too: who is able to write the best, most sophisticated Splinterlands bot? In chess there are competitions only for software ...
Especially in chess, bots are great tools to practice one's skills, analysing games and learning to understand chess better.
(Interesting also for Splinterlands could be the idea that some chess programs are having certain modes in which they intentionally don't always play the best possible move to make the games against human opponents more exciting and variable.)
However, one difference is that in chess (or GO) in (human) tournaments and public servers bots are strictly forbidden. That means human players are never forced to play against a bot if they don't want. They can intentionally challenge a chess program (if they really think they would be able to beat 'God') :-) or just practice with it, but in human tournaments they can be sure to face human opponents only.
Concerning Splinterlands that could mean, there could be different kinds of competitions in future, for example "bot only", "human only" and "mixed". Then at least everybody would have a choice. And I know very well that even if 'we' would try to implement these different kinds of tournaments it would be very difficult to verify that a 'human' is really a 'human'.
On point 1 and 2
Would it make more sense to wait for land to implement then propose this change?
Depending on how far land is from implementation it could be factored in then.
On the first point, would it be a good idea to commit to something like 1 new ruleset per month? And maybe deprecate some older ones in favor of newer ones after a while to not make it super complicated for the human players after a while.
That should give bots a hard time keeping up. The question is, would we tolerate the rapid changes better, as humans?
But doesn't it really just punish you for not having a leveled up card rather than rewarding you for having it? Meaning will the rewards for a given league increase from where it is now?
Punishing vs rewarding in these cases are really just a matter of perspective. Yes, players using lower level cards will get less than they received previously if this change goes into effect, but really they were getting more than is sustainable for their cards in the past and it's just being "fixed" now.
But from the general perspective - not comparing it to a flawed previous system - the higher level your cards, the more rewards you earn - so you are rewarded for getting higher level cards.
Thanks for the reply. What aspect is unsustainable? Is it the rewards paid out or is it fluctuations in the card market?
I thought the fixed pool of rewards ensured sustainability, but I'm interested in learning why that is not the case, meaning we need to implement something like this. I love learning, so thanks for your insightful responses!
In general a good idea.
What if:
All cards have the same starts from Level 1 to Max,
Skill becomes more skillbased,
Only rewards change.
Level 1 no rewards,
level Max = max rewards.
That would be a very drastic change, but would remove bots, special if the curve would be right.
Now the question would be, are investors sad or happy with it?
I mean on the other hand "delegate cards" would be for example for the best to earn.
What would be the reason to earn?
Yeah here everything becomes difficult :D
Was a spontan idea, but maybe something like this ( less drastic) could be a thing.
play with high level cards could access the rewards chests,
i mean at some point the walls are to high for new players and the game will die.
The game has not the "fun factor" of a high class game. So it needs to be a competitive game.
If this becomes impossible to be,
what game is it at the end?
Pay to play to earn?
In higher leagues it is part of the fun in the game and skill of the player to craft your deck in a cost effective way. This proposal will remove that. May I suggest to remove the champ limit or make it less impactful by for example giving 1 or 2 cards per match that are exempt at diamond / champ because in the current system we see no low level farming at champ so there is no reason to solve anything. To put this proposal as a blanket over all leagues will take away a fun element of the game, and reduce the influence of skill/knowledge of the player.
Then the point system is borked.
If a League of Legends player with a "true" ability of Silver 1 is on Silver 1, he can play literally unlimited matches but he will stay at Silver 1, as he'll win 50% of the matches and lose 50% of the matches. Small swings obviously happens, but this hypotetical player will end up in the same place as his teoretical, true ability. That's what a MMR system is meant to do.
If in Splinterlands, bot accounts full of lvl 1 cards can just climb through the leagues by beating other bot accounts running the same bot software, something's not right. If they're at the same ability level (eg same bot software) and using the same (or really similar) cards, they should just keep wasting their time against each other, without climbing the leagues.
Back to the LoL example: if you take 1000 "true" Silver 1 players and put them against each other, after thousands of matches they'll all still be at Silver 1, as that's their correct ranking. They can't climb if they're not actually playing better.
In general it is simple, make the game more complex + add random factors.
For now it is a bot game, and i see no reason why this would change.
The most simple thing would be to "disvalue" low-effort bots with an additional layer of complexity.
With this change in place, it could also remove the general MMR system and use the cards for access.
Why wasting time in lower leagues with higher level cards?
You match the cards, you can join the league.
I totally agree, but if thats the case maybe bring back guaranteed elements for every match or something. Cuz now its just really expensive to play Splinterlands at the level that you want to play at, compared to the past (or you just get a lower ROI, which doesn't matter, except it does a little bit).
That's not true in my case. Nonetheless, what about this? Each game has a pot based on the total level of cards played. So level cards would essentially lower the pot. The winner takes the whole pot. It encourages players to level up because 1. It's easier to win with leveled up cards. 2. A player with leveled up cards will earn more over time.
This rewards good play which will make the game more fun and allows a mechanism to reward purchases.
hello sir @yabapmatt .
Can't we just remove the rewards and rating increase from, for example a gold-league battle between 1bcx vs 1bcx?
Sometimes I cannot find an appropriate level summoner to rent because there's nothing available to rent or the ones available are grossly overpriced.
So if I'm in Gold, and have to use a level 1 legendary summoner, I can still win (of course not always) but then my rewards would be significantly lower with this proposal.
I know there are many 1bcx bots in gold (I have some too), so I'm okay with losing my reward/rating if I manually win against fellow low level decks (bot or not) in Gold. But if I beat a high level (gold-capped) deck, then I feel it's unfair to get punished.
It's been a while you haven't played if you think that it's still the case.
Competition has be increasing every season for the past like 4 seasons.
I spent thousands in SPL and it takes me half the season to get out of silver sometimes.
I used to be able to get to gold with low level cards, now you have to have a maxed deck to be able to be competitive in gold because everybody is playing maxed decks.
Decks might not be maxed in silver but rewards are so low that doesn't even makes sense to punish players that don't have a great silver deck. It's a tax on a tax.
We're not even talking about rewards in bronze.
Sincerely, do be able to make that game any profitable (with still a bit of luck) is to play in diamonds at least.
Some cards are in some rulesets even worser at higher level, take the Gelatinous Cube, if you use Mimosa Nightshade or the Ruleset is "No Magic" the Gelatinous Cube level 9 is better than the level 10 version, simple because he has one livepoint more and Void is already added from the summoner or is not neccessary if no magic monster can be on the battlefield.
I think it is better if your monster has one lifepoint more without any disadvantages for this or not ?
in a game, punish players with skill, such an idea can only come from someone who has no idea about gaming and only thinks about his money, sorry but we should not destroy the balance between game and investors even more!
One question: Do you have contact with other people in real life?
i ask because your texts come across as if you are quite anti-social and have zero sense of empathy
okay all good 😘